Lewis Frederickson

Dr. Lewis Frederickson is a serving Group Captain in the Royal Australian Air Force and holds the position of Director of History and Heritage Services within the RAAF's History and Heritage Branch, serving as the official RAAF Historian. He earned his PhD from UNSW Canberra in 2015, with his thesis examining Australia's Great War experience. Frederickson also holds undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in History, Literature, and Education. Over 35 years of permanent and reserve service in the RAAF, he worked as a fighter controller, air battle manager, and Qualified Aviation Instructor, undertaking multiple deployments to the Middle East Region in staff, training, and operational roles. Previously, he served as Chief of Air Force Fellow at UNSW Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA), lecturing in the history and strategy of air power. He is a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Canberra's School of Humanities & Social Sciences, where he has co-supervised postgraduate research projects, including analyses of NATO's counter-narcotics and counterinsurgency approaches in Afghanistan.

Frederickson specializes in military history, air power strategy, and the intersections of academic and vocational education in air and land domains within Australian history. His key publications include 'After Anzac: The Development of Australian Infantry on the Western Front' (Cambridge University Press, 2025), which details the post-Gallipoli development of Australian infantry tactics and training on the Western Front; 'Armageddon and OKRA: Australia's Air Operations in the Middle East a Century Apart' (Big Sky Publishing, 2020), comparing Royal Australian Air Force operations during World War I and Operation OKRA; and 'Come On Australia', co-authored with Victor Nurcombe (Simon & Schuster Australia, 2024), based on Great War soldiers' diaries. He has contributed essays to Air Force publications such as the Kestrel Papers and presented public lectures on Great War aviation and infantry topics at UNSW Canberra.